A Pain Reporting Platform for Adolescents with Sickle-Cell Disease

This paper presents the latest version of the Pain Reporting and Management mHealth Platform for adolescent Sickle Cell Disease, developed in collaboration by Arizona State University and the Children’s National Health System. This platform supports a cross-platform mHealth app, reporting and task management API, and portal dashboard for care provider monitoring. Extending our prior work, the latest version adds enhanced app features (games, power-ups, badges, notifications) to promote sustained adherence to the reporting protocol, and enhanced reporting features for providers that track high fidelity compliance measures and aggregate outcome scores. This paper summarizes the architecture and principle features of the platform, and presents data supporting improved compliance

Volunteer Motivations at the 2012 Super Bowl

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine mega-event volunteers’ motivations and their impact on volunteer satisfaction. Additionally, this study investigated motivational differences between volunteers based upon four demographic variables: age, gender, educational level, and income. Design/methodology/approach – A modified version of the Volunteer Motivations Scale for International Sporting Events (Bang and Chelladurai, 2009) was administered to 8,000 Super Bowl volunteers via Survey Monkey with the permission of the Indiana Sports Corporation. In all, 24 percent (n=1,928) of the volunteers completed the survey. Exploratory factor analysis was used to reduce the survey questions into a smaller number factors. Multivariate analysis of variance was utilized to compare differences in the four demographic variables on the factors. Multiple regression was used to predict satisfaction on the basis of the four factors. Findings – Volunteers were motivated by four factors: Community Support, Love of Sports, Personal Growth, and Career Development. These four factors all significantly predicted satisfaction with the volunteer experience. The overall MANOVA was significant and revealed that ten of 16 group comparisons possessed significant differences. Females rated Community higher than males, while males rated Love of Sports higher than females. Older volunteers and those with higher household incomes were motivated more by Community Support, while younger volunteers and those with lower incomes were motivated by Career Development. Likewise, less educated volunteers placed a higher value on Career motivations than more educated volunteers who placed a high value on Personal Growth. Research limitations/implications – Dissatisfied volunteers may have chosen to not participate in the study. Follow-up interviews with dissatisfied volunteers might provide insight for event organizers that would shed light on factors that influence retention and recidivism. Practical implications – The findings of this study suggest that mega sport volunteer managers should recognize that motivational differences among volunteers do exist and utilize this information for creating recruitment materials targeted to specific groups. Then volunteers can be assigned to tasks that tap into their desire, thus enhancing potential volunteer satisfaction and their return as a volunteer at future events. Originality/value – This study was conducted in the context of America’s largest mega event in a city that hosted the event for the first time. In addition to collecting one of the largest number of responses for volunteers at mega-sporting events, the development of the Community Support factor was unique within the context of this study. The Community Support factor was rated as the most important by volunteers and tied to other questions such as wanting to help make the event a success, helping others, and creating a better society. This indicates that volunteers had pride in their community and wanted to help the event be successful by helping the city’s visitors

Learning through interactive artifacts:Personal fabrication using electrochromic displays to remember Atari women programmers

In recent years makerspaces have gained traction as an environment where makers and tinkerers can freely create artefacts with digital fabrication tools. They are particularly suited for introducing new fabrication techniques because these spaces support hands-on experiences. Electrochromic displays are one such technology that has become possible to fabricate using new techniques and off-the-shelf tools which lends itself to be used in a workshop setting. Leveraging this development, we facilitated a makerspace workshop that introduced participants to this new technology. To limit the scope of the workshop outcome we used the little known history of female developers of video games (Atari) from the 1970s and 1980s as a design framing. The participants (undergraduates, 16 female, 2 male, aged 19–21 years) explored the Atari women’s role in development and through this exploration they created artifacts using novel electrochromic displays as designed responses. Throughout the workshop participants answered daily questionnaires and kept records of their progress. Our analysis of the questionnaires and the resulting projects suggests that having a relatable and meaningful context increases both motivation and engagement of the participants. We discuss the extrinsic motivations that enhance engagement, and provide suggestions for introducing new technologies in the makerspace context

Understanding the Intrinsic Motivations of User Acceptance of Hedonic Information Systems: Towards a Unified Research Model

Although user acceptance of entertainment-oriented information systems (IS), which are called Hedonic IS (HIS), has drawn considerable attention in literature, our understanding of user acceptance of HIS is still limited. This article focuses on exploring the intrinsic motivations of HIS acceptance from a unique perspective. It proposes a hybrid HIS acceptance model that considers the unique characteristics of HIS and the multiple conceptual identities of an HIS user. The model integrates intrinsic motivation factors from Hedonic theory, Flow theory, and the PAD (Pleasure, Arousal, and Dominance) emotion model with the Technology Acceptance Model. The proposed hybrid HIS acceptance model has been empirically tested by a quantitative field survey. The results indicate that emotional responses, imaginal responses, and flow experience are three main predictors of HIS acceptance

Sequential, ecumenical, religious education program for young profoundly handicapped and abused/neglected children in a residential setting

The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to develop a formal, sequen­tial, ecumenical religious education program for the spiritual development of the young child. This program is designed specifically for the young children in residential care at Saint Vincent\u27s Child Care Center in Timonium, Maryland. These children range in age from birth to 10 years of age. Their handicapping conditions range from profound retardation, multihandicaps, emotional and behavioral problems to results of abuse and neglect

The Relationship between Physical Fitness and Academic Performance in College Club Sports Students

Pursuing innovative strategies to improve academic performance is an ongoing priority for many higher education institutions. One area that evidence has shown to further enhance cognitive ability, memory, and focus, but also, enhance the emotional and social well-being of students is through regular physical fitness. The importance of this study was to explore whether the benefits of physical fitness would have a similar impact on academic performance in college club sports students as it does on children as literature is limited concerning this relationship surrounding the college-aged population. The purpose of this study was to determine whether there was a relationship between Just Jump System® scores and Grade Point Averages in college club sports students. This study used a quantitative correlational design to address the research questions and test the hypotheses. Archival data consisting of 122 college club sports students among nine club sports teams from a private higher education institution was used for this study. The Pearson Product Moment Correlation was conducted to analyze the archival data. The analyses revealed that there was no significant relationship between the two variables for the cumulative 2019-2020 academic year, the fall 2019, and spring 2020 semesters. The findings indicate that although no significant relationship was found, the overall mean for fitness scores were all above average or higher and the overall mean for grade point averages were all greater than a 3.0. Therefore, further research is recommended in order to determine whether there is a relationship between physical fitness and academic performance within the general college population

Monitoring and Improving User Compliance and Data Quality For Long and Repetitive Self-Reporting MHealth Surveys

abstract: For the past decade, mobile health applications are seeing greater acceptance due to their potential to remotely monitor and increase patient engagement, particularly for chronic disease. Sickle Cell Disease is an inherited chronic disorder of red blood cells requiring careful pain management. A significant number of mHealth applications have been developed in the market to help clinicians collect and monitor information of SCD patients. Surveys are the most common way to self-report patient conditions. These are non-engaging and suffer from poor compliance. The quality of data gathered from survey instruments while using technology can be questioned as patients may be motivated to complete a task but not motivated to do it well. A compromise in quality and quantity of the collected patient data hinders the clinicians' effort to be able to monitor patient's health on a regular basis and derive effective treatment measures. This research study has two goals. The first is to monitor user compliance and data quality in mHealth apps with long and repetitive surveys delivered. The second is to identify possible motivational interventions to help improve compliance and data quality. As a form of intervention, will introduce intrinsic and extrinsic motivational factors within the application and test it on a small target population. I will validate the impact of these motivational factors by performing a comparative analysis on the test results to determine improvements in user performance. This study is relevant, as it will help analyze user behavior in long and repetitive self-reporting tasks and derive measures to improve user performance. The results will assist software engineers working with doctors in designing and developing improved self-reporting mHealth applications for collecting better quality data and enhance user compliance.Dissertation/ThesisMasters Thesis Computer Science 201

The Relationship Between Instructor Self-Efficacy and Online Course Success Rates at a Community College

The purpose of this quantitative, non-experimental, predictive correlational study was to determine if an online instructor’s perception of their own self-efficacy in student engagement, instructional strategies, classroom management, and use of computers could predict their online course success rate. As distance education continues to grow, administrators seek ways to improve students’ learning experiences and success in online courses. One method of retaining students in programs is providing instructors the needed resources to support students as they progress through a course. The participants for the current study were faculty at a community college in North Carolina who taught an online course in fall of 2020. A sample of 65 instructors were surveyed using an instrument called the Michigan Nurse Educators Sense of Efficacy for Online Teaching Scale (MNESEOTS). Collected data were analyzed using multiple linear regression, which found no significant predictive relationships between instructor self-efficacy and any of the four measured areas of student success. While this contradicts some of the literature, recommendations for future research include additional studies with increased sample sizes at more institutions and expanded surveys targeting online and seated faculty to determine if a difference between the variables exists for each of those populations. Moreover, additional research should include comparisons of the variables against course success rates